Editorial
Lessons from municipal polls
Both the ruling and opposition should heed these
The municipal elections, the first round of which passed rather peacefully, has ended on a sad note on Tuesday as they were marked by widespread violence coupled with snatching and stuffing of ballot boxes allegedly by ruling party cadres in the Chittagong and Sylhet divisions.
Such an ending of the municipal elections has been accompanied by predictable blame games as well as hartals by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in trouble-torn districts.
Understandably, relative success of the BNP-backed mayoral candidates vis-à-vis the electoral losses sustained by the ruling Awami League-backed candidates has been instrumental in triggering the electoral violence in its final rounds. In other words, leaders of the ruling party have found it hard to digest the reverses their favourite candidates have gone through so much so that the joint-secretary general of Awami League has squarely blamed their arch rival BNP for the electoral violence and even warned them of serious consequences for that. Such utterances from responsible ruling party men are regrettable and uncalled for.
Whereas in democratic parlance the ruling party could have congratulated the opposition BNP for the success of the candidates supported by the latter and the opposition reciprocated it by welcoming, they have again engaged themselves in a slanging match of exchanging bitter recriminations. In any case, the government could have lapped up the credit for presenting the nation with another instance of free, fair and peaceful local government election after that of the Chittagong City Corporation (CCC). On the other hand, the better performer in this case, the opposition BNP, far from accepting the electoral results in a decent manner by thanking the electorate as well as the Election Commission for its handling of the polls, has responded with the time-worn, blunt and widely abhorred agitational programme like hartal.
The post-polls reactions of both the major political camps have therefore disappointed the nation as a whole. Despite the unwelcome developments in some of the constituencies, the overall outcome of the municipal polls should be a lesson to learn for the ruling party and the opposition, each in their own way. The opposition has made inroads into constituencies that the ruling party considered to be their bastions of power. Similarly, the opposition party, too, has experienced similar reverses. So, they should better get used to accepting these results as the verdict of the people rather than behaving in their habitual knee-jerk fashion.
In particular, the phenomenon of rebellion by local level leaders and workers of both the parties as manifested in the just held municipal polls should be a wake up call for both of them. These are signs of leadership crisis at the centres.
Hopefully, the ruling and the opposition parties would get wiser after the municipal polls. Learning from the mistakes, the ruling Awami League needs to improve their performance during the remaining years of their present term. The opposition should also use this opportunity and join parliament where they have a greater role to play for the electorate.
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